Home Media Magazine reports that Netflix has signed a streaming deal with independent film distributor Osiris Entertainment. New titles included in the deal are Solitary, An American in China, Eva, Tricks of a Woman, A Lure, Dumping Lisa and The Fall, with the film Weakness available starting D...

Here are a few favorites from Saturday's AVATAR session. And by the way, I'm excited to let everybody know that we're looking to add sessions on a weekly basis now! I think the plan will be to keep the every other Saturday going, and to add a weekly evening session too.

I've recently upgraded comments here which will allow you to do the following if you sign in: 1. Link to an existing profile (Facebook, Twitter, Google, Open ID etc.) 2. Respond directly to other people's comments 3. Delete a comment yourself So why would you want to go through the trouble of...

I've recently upgraded comments here which will allow you to do the following if you sign in: 1. Link to an existing profile (Facebook, Twitter, Google, Open ID etc.) 2. Respond directly to other people's comments 3. Delete a comment yourself So why would you want to go through the trouble of...

The question reminds of that exchange from Whit Stillman's Barcelona
One thing that keeps
cropping up is ''subtext.''
Plays, novels, songs, all have a subtext...
...which I take to mean
a hidden message or import of some kind.
Subtext, we know. But what do you call
the message or meaning...
...that's on the surface, open and obvious?
They never talk about that.
What do you call
what's above the subtext?
The text.

(Glyph on brick from Zen's photostream on Flickr.) I was wondering why if there was a "_", why there wasn't a complementary symbol that is at the top of the line, an "overscore" if you will? You might think of it as the carport of type. Or an omega to the underscore's omega. I asked some of th...

Seems like the first commenter is picking the most limited view of "need" - an aesthetic need is a valid one, so is an ergonomic need, or an economic need, or a need to shift the work between multiple members of the household, or a need to multi-task (see economic, above). Denying that those needs exist is why products fail. And parents are not parents in a bubble, they live in homes, with other items and with other activities, and baby products will succeed better when they better integrate with those things.
You only have to take a look at the wide availability of KISS (etc.) logo onesies to acknowledge the large amount of projection that goes into children products. No, the infant doesn't know who KISS is, and doesn't necessarily like KISS, and didn't purchase the garment, but the parent did and does and uses it regularly and has their own emotional engagement with it.
Anyway, this is a great podcast, there's a lot of good info about the state of the art, and the situation that parents find themselves in, and how they approach the problem solving. Fascinating stuff, thanks!

Connections - May 6, 2009: In this episode, Icon-o-Cast mom-to-be Lisa Leckie, new mom Gretchen Anderson and experienced mom Sandrine Lebas talk about the decisions new moms make as they struggle with seemingly infinite product choices and apply their personal values to the experience of motherho...

Awesome! I just spent 2 weeks wandering around Amsterdam and Brussels and took almost 1000 pictures, so I was living that mode; it was fun but eventually burned me out. You can see the rate of pictures per day decline sharply by the end. I love this picture, though!

I saw this on the walk in this morning. It reminded me that I didn't have my camera with me and that my Blackberry camera just doesn't quite get it done. But... it was an excuse to launch a new category on the blog.

As a child in the days before the Star Trek movies started - so when Trekdom was still slightly underground (as was fandom in general) - I was amazed to find a "Making Of" Star Trek book in my library, and I devoured it: behind-the-scene stories, discussions of bloopers and pranks, how they made the Tribbles, and so on. One of the things that is still with me decades later is the discussion of the women's costumes - (not the uniforms but for guest characters) where they wanted to create sexy not as tight but as flowy in such a way that it might drop at any time. Even as a 10-year old I thought I preferred the opposite and I guess I still do (but this isn't about me, then, is it???) so maybe that's why that evocative description stuck with me.

Paramount recently released the poster for the new Star Trek movie, opening May 8. The black and white composition and almost abstract suggestion of speed make an interesting contrast to the clear forms and primary colors of the original show. Long-time DG readers may remember this quotation, c...

Several of the upcoming district conferences have their 2008 web sites up - content still in progress, but expect them to fill out every the next few weeks. Online registration is open on some of these sites as of this posting. Southern (March-8, Savannah, Georgia) Midwest (April 4-6, Kansa...

In a New York Time's Magazine* Consumed article, Rob Walker discusses the IDEA award winning HomeHero fire extinguisher. The product is notable because unlike traditional fire extinguisher designs, the HomeHero is clearly designed to be attractive . More than just an aesthetic issue, the ar...

Fantastic, Rob. This will be interesting, since there are not (that I'm aware of) existing standards for showing design research work; whereas much of ID portfolio stuff is very very specified by convention...be curious to see how this plays out.

You read that right - a portfolio review for design researchers. With the growing number of design researchers and the importance of research as a skill for designers, there's a need for guidance on putting together a design research portfolio. We are in the early planning stages, with the goa...

Gah - that old chestnut ("we don't think people can tell us what they want so we don't believe in research") is part arrogant and part naive. Sony put out a book glorifying their industrial design with a similar statement.
You deflect that all-too-familiar refrain nicely in this post, though. Thanks!

This past week's Businessweek contains an interesting article about the design process at Bang & Olufsen. Bang & Olufsen: Design Reigns Supreme describes what might be called the "great man" theory of design, where design vision takes precedence over engineering and business, and does not inc...

I think my session on Connecting the Play of Improv with the Work of Ethnography probably belongs on your list. I'll be posting more info about the session to our blog (http://www.portigal.com/blog) over the next couple of days.

I've pulled summaries of some of the key human factors and design research related presentations from the upcoming Connecting '07 conference schedule -but by no means complete nor a subsitute for reviewing the full program yourself: From Me to You: Designer Connecting to User (Thurs, Oct 18, 2PM...

I've written a number of things about ethnographic research over the years, but a brief introduction is at http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/archives/design/an_introduction_to_ethnographic_research_3528.asp
It's only a start, no doubt, for the questions that you have. I'm happy to share more information.
http://www.portigal.com
http://www.portigal.com/blog/

Wikipedia defines ethnography as the "...qualitative description of human social phenomena, based on fieldwork." This can include direct observation of behavior, interviews, and other techniques. You should be interested in ethnography because it represents one of the newer approaches to marke...